


The Only Glory

by Jaded



Series: Rebelcaptain Ficlets [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Babyfic sorta, Established Relationship, F/M, Surviving the war, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-10-29 02:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10844583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded/pseuds/Jaded
Summary: "Surviving is the only glory in war." Jyn and Cassian survive the war against the Empire and learn to live their lives in peace. A series of unconnected ficlets.





	1. I just don't want to think for a while

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt requested by @brambleberrycottage

* * *

 

 "Surviving is the only glory in war."

\-- Samuel Fuller

* * *

 

 

“I just don’t want to think for a while,” Jyn says, turning to him. Her green eyes look like burnished sea glass–cloudy and smooth and full of an unnamed sorrow. In her hand is a framed image of her mother as a child under cracked glass. Lyra has the same dark hair, the same defiant eyes. 

 

They are on Aria Prime–her mother’s homeworld–and this is the first time she has touched down on the soil and smelled the salty sea air near her dead grandmother’s collapsed homestead. They are able to recover a few weathered artifacts, but time and nature have returned Jyn’s family heirlooms to the soil.

 

She leads him a cave by the beach, her hand twined with his, and undresses him carefully in the shadow and away from the encroaching sunshine. Jyn takes her time, her fingers tracing scars or wrapped tight around his bicep as though to take the measurement to memory. Cassian returns the favor, taking care at undoing her tunic and revealing her pale shoulders, kissing his way down her collarbone until she shivers over and over again in anticipation, the warmth of his lips too fleeting.

 

Their love knows pain, knows grief, knows silence. They know each other, and he knows what she needs right now without her having to ask. They listen to the ocean wave crash into the shoals; they make love as though they have all the time left in the world. 

 

“Sometimes I don’t know if I’ve fully processed everything that has happened,” she says when she’s wrapped up in his parka, her feet still bare and dug into the sand. “Not just Scarif, but my mother. My father. I feel as though I should be plagued by nightmares, but I’m not. Sometimes I think that maybe it’s because we survived, and I was so relieved to have made it–to have made it with _you_ , that it overrode everything else.” She shakes her head, and gives him a private smile. “But other times, I think I must be a monster.”

 

“You’re not a monster,” he says. “You’re the strongest person I know.” He tips her chin up so that she can look up at him. “And I know Leia Organa.”

 

She laughs before growing quiet again. “It’s hard to think about it so much.”

 

“Do you not want to think about it again for a while?” he suggests. 

 

Her laugh is a quiet little hum. “I think that’s a good idea.”

 

Cassian folds her in his arms and buries his head in her shoulder. “Good,” he says quietly.

 

“Good,” she repeats.

 

She falls asleep in his arms, listening to the sound of the ocean. They waves beat in, a steady rhythm; the heartbeat of a world. 

 


	2. Precious

They lived and had one small precious child, a boy with dark hair, smooth skin, and his mother’s fierce stare.

 

Those early years went by too quickly they felt, the fleeting nature of a childhood through a parent’s eyes. But each moment was full, packed in with days running through the bases or through fields of red grass on planets they’d come to know like a second home. And then there were those moments when they’d be roused from sleep by his panic cries.

 

“It’s separation anxiety,” Shara explained–-she had gone through this with Poe. “It’s a normal step of development. He just…misses you both.”

 

And Cassian and Jyn both know too well what it means to miss someone; to long for and be afraid that you will never again see the one or two people in the galaxy who were supposed to love you and never leave you. And so they curl up at their son’s bedside and watch his worry float away as his chubby face grows peaceful in the dark.

 

“He’ll grow up so fast,” Jyn swallows, and touches his small shoulder. She wants to memorize his childhood and the way his dark eyelashes fall on his cheek. But she knows that she can’t.

 

“We have to just live in the moment,” Cassian says. He reaches for her, and their hands touch.

 

They are tired–he’s been waking often and at odd hours–but they have been tired like this before. The difference now is peace, however tenuous. And the difference is having a future they can see–a future with a face and with a sweet little laugh. It’s one they had never anticipated or thought they deserved until they found it.

 

Their son rolls in his bed, his snores fading into something more even and steady. They stay holding hands. They both fall asleep to the sound of his quiet breathing, content in each other; in their family.

 

 


	3. Pretending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian and Jyn, undercover. For @carr-crashh-heartss from the prompt, "You're the only one."

“You’re the only one.”

 

Cassian says this to her as he takes a sip of Alderaanean wine, a pleasant, practiced smile on his face as the Imperial commander and her husband look upon them both patiently.

 

There’s a hum in Jyn’s ears, and maybe it’s the wine, but she manages her line despite it. “The only one?” she echoes, playing dumb.

 

The ballroom is bright with lights, excessive in its pomp, and it’s everything in the galaxy that Jyn hates. But she plays her role. She can pretend to be a doting Imperial wife. She’s learning to be a good little spy. It helps that her teacher is the best the rebellion has to offer.

 

Cassian puts a hand on her chin and tips up her face to look at him. “For me.”

 

The commander and her husband tilt their heads back and laugh in delight, the sound like the bubbles in their sparkling wine from a dead planet. Jyn stills the rage inside of her and swoons a little into Cassian’s hand.

 

“You make me blush,” she says, swatting at him playfully, but then she does blush when she looks into his eyes, so intent, so focused in on her. He’s a brilliant spy, she reminds herself, a master actor, and they take their leave of the commander, Cassian’s arm wrapped around her waist, her ballgown swishing behind her as they play at finding somewhere private to be together when their target is actually the heavily guarded room with important intel on weapons runners.

 

At the opening to the corridor out of the ballroom and toward their destination, she stops Cassian dead. They’ll sell this last moment, she thinks, and then they’ll disappear and be back on base before anyone can remember the names of the two newly married Imperials they were supposed to be.

 

“What?” he says, and she places her hands on his face and feels the surprise spread there. She’s good at pretending, she thinks, pulling him in for a kiss. He follows her lead, sliding his lips against hers, his mouth opening her mouth. And she’s good at pretending that she’s pretending, she thinks, and maybe he is, too.

 


	4. Well Deserved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For @oh-nostalgiaa

“You deserve better,” Jyn says, even as her mouth slides down the column of his neck and her hands tear at his battered and dirty tunic to find the naked plane of his chest. It’s the third time she’s said it, repeated these words with her breath hot against his skin, and he’s tired of hearing it, of thinking that she feels that it needs to be said. What is deserved? He deserved death on Scarif for his multitude of sins, to burn up like the sun, but he survived. She survived.

 

  
Cassian hoists her off her feet and carries her to the bed. She gasps, then curls her legs around his waist. “What do you deserve?” he asks her as he lays her on her back. “Have you asked yourself that?”   


 

“I don’t care about what I deserve,” she says, defiant, her lips pursed together, her chin proud. Love for her creeps up his spine, makes the nerves in his fingers dance as his hands find her face in the cold, dark room. He knows that he’ll do anything for her–bleed for her if she only asks–-even if she doesn’t.    


 

“Then what do you want?” he whispers, carding his fingers through her hair and lifting her face to his.    


 

Enough light spills into the room from beneath the door that he can see the way her expression shifts, and her eyes soften then darken. She tugs at his heart with just a glance–and Cassian hasn’t stopped looking at her since the day he first saw her face.    


 

“What do you want, Jyn?” he repeats.   


 

She reaches for him and her eyes fall close. There is a smile on her face–beautiful; peaceful. “Don’t you already know, Cassian?”

 


	5. Luxury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Jyn Erso apprecation week, day 2: luxury.

Once, when she was Tanith Ponta, Jyn had been invited to a feast by smugglers and weapons traders, people she planned on ripping off before they could recover from their hangovers. There’d be so much wine that the hosts ran out of glasses with which to fill, and the room was warm with the smell of roasts of rare birds and beasts. At the center of the event was a sculpture of ice and a cake decorated with enough gold that the cost would have been enough to feed her for a standard year on the run. She’d procured a black shimmersilk dress adorned in pearls and had attended, gathering intel for herself on easy targets, on easy-to-exploit weaknesses. She’d eaten some of the food, but it had all tasted like ash in her mouth as she ran bleeding to her escape ship the next day. 

  
The luxury of the rich and heartless–-she wanted none of it.   


 

+   


 

“What’s the most delicious or luxurious thing that you’ve ever eaten?”    


 

Downtime on base, and especially on Hoth, was often filled with these sorts of questions: lists of things different rebels missed; the experiences they wanted to relive; the life they wanted after war if they were lucky enough to survive it.   


 

“I tasted bantha milk ice cream once,” a boy–and he was little more than that, a boy–said, rubbing his hand on his head. “It was blue and sour and sweet, and it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever had.”    


 

“You’re from a desert planet?” Cassian asked.   


 

“Yes, so it was a real treat.”   


 

Jyn didn’t offer up her answer and no one asked, not at least until the party broke up.    


 

“What about you?” Cassian asked, his hand on the small of her back as they walked down the hallways back to his upcoming briefing with Draven. She didn’t know if he even realized that he was doing it, the unconscious way he touched her all the time even though whatever they were when it’s just the two of them seemed to exist in a place state of limbo, but she wasn’t going to call him out on him because she didn’t want him to stop. “What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten.”   


 

She thought of her mother’s meals, of citrus cakes on Coruscant, and of stolen bites of stew, but what came to mind is something altogether different.   


 

Jyn stopped and leaned against the wall, the metal smooth on her back. “Saw brought me to the rebel base once.” She looked at him, felt her anxieties wash away when she saw the softness in the eyes, the focused attention that said to her that he really wanted to know and that this wasn’t just small talk to pass the time. “I was a little girl, still in braids, and we were here to meet Bail Organa.”   


 

Cassian raised an eyebrow in interest, but stayed silent and listening.   


 

“The Partisans weren’t great with their cuisine, if you can imagine, so when we arrived, the rebel food smelled amazing.”   


 

He gave a little knowing chuckle, and she continued.   


 

“As I was walking by the mess, I smelled this fresh bread, and this boy saw me and gave me a slice. I can still taste it now. That was the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.” When she looked up at him, Cassian’s face was an odd mix of memory and confusion. She touched his arm, her thumb rubbing his wrist. “Hey, what’s wrong?”   


 

He blinked twice, slow and thoughtful. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”   


 

“Then what is it?”   


 

He bit his thumbnail, and gave a little smile. “I think maybe we’ve met before, Jyn, a long, long time ago.”   


 

+   


 

“How long will you be gone?”    


 

Bodhi’s firing up the ship and Cassian’s pulling off his blue parka and putting on his leather jacket. He’s going somewhere, somewhere she’s not going.    


 

“The mission should only take a few days. Bodhi and I will be back before you know it.”   


 

“And what if you’re not?”   


 

“I’ll be back, Jyn.”   


 

She’d heard the rumors that spread about her around the base–that she was a runner, that she’d take the first chance she had and disappear from the Echo Base and the rebellion like a mynock out of hell. But none of those people knew the first thing about Jyn Erso: she never ran unless she was being chased; she never left because she was always the one left behind.    
But Cassian understood. He walked down the ramp and she held out her arms to take his coat, but he walked around her instead, and placed the heavy parka on her shoulders. It smelled like him, and she could still feel the warmth of his body clinging to he fabric.    


 

“I will be home before you know it,” he said as he circled around her to look at her, eye to eye. “I promise.” She nodded, feeling sudden tears sting her eyes.    


 

He did not kiss her or embrace her as he said goodbye–they weren’t there yet–but they touched hands, fingers lingering longer than necessary, and she bid him and Bodhi goodbye and walked back to her quarters with Baze, who had been waiting in the shadows.   


 

The luxury of having a home, of having friends, of tears of gladness instead of anger of fear. Who needed gold or jewels or silk or the finest things to eat when there was this to be had? Not her. Not Jyn Erso.

 

 


	6. Faith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Jyn Erso Appreciation Week, Day 1: Faith

She has no faith except for in her own fists, in the way her knuckles will fight for her when nothing and no one else will. Jyn’s given up on a belief in anything higher or greater than herself, because she is always disappointed in the end, and she’s tired of being a fool. 

 

  
+   


 

Her mother taught her about the Force, wrapping her in the scarlet sash of her faith and in the stories of the Jedi. “Put your faith in the Force,” Lyra had told her, kissing the kyber necklace that lay warm against her skin; kissing her daughter’s forehead just before bed as the night settled heavy on their homestead on Lah’mu.    


 

But her mother had left her and had never come back.   


 

Her father taught her about science, about atoms and cells and the galaxy. “I have faith in the structure of the universe, Stardust,” he would tell her, diagramming the way elements could bond to make water or the air they breathed; showing her the similarities between a dissected eye of a bulbous frond toad and a holo of a violet nebula.    


 

But he left her in the end, too. It mattered little that he was taken–he never came looking for her.   


 

+   


 

Saw teaches her about faith in a cause, and she tastes the blood on her tongue at fifteen and feels the fervor of belief set her afire.    


 

“My brave and fierce girl,” Saw says, ruffling her hair in a rare show of affection before handing her a detonator and a custom-built blaster perfect for her small hands.   


 

But he leaves her too. And though he was the one to open that first hatch, to let the sun in, he was also the one who put her back inside and closed the door. She should have seen it coming, but she didn’t.   


 

+   


 

But Cassian.   


 

When Jyn’s lost all faith in everything, Cassian shows his faith in her, and her throat is tight with fear and feelings she’s pushed down for almost a decade. It makes her heart roar to life like a sun, and she burns so hot and bright in his presence that she thinks she may die. But Jyn doesn’t die, not today, not tomorrow, not on Scarif. And she finds faith again–-not just in the way her fists can punish but in how she can grasp the hands of a friend in camaraderie and how those same hands could also cradle, soft and with love, the face of a man with sad eyes, a man who not only stayed, but came back.

 


	7. Father's Day 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for father's day, 2017.

Three years after the war ends, they plan for it, in so much as anyone could actually  _plan_  to bring a child into the galaxy. For all their intentions of reading the literature on both pregnancy and child rearing, Cassian and Jyn never quite get to it and just throw caution to the wind and hope that the Force will trust in them. 

 

Cassian turns out to be the more nervous one of the two, pacing her medbay room when the baby is ready to arrive, bumping into the medical droids when he is too anxious to pay attention. But it goes smoothly–for once they get something that is easy–and their son arrives, dark eyes and dark hair, Jyn’s chin and Cassian’s mouth. 

 

When Cassian goes to see this child that he and Jyn somehow made, his son reaches out and clutches one of Cassian’s fingers with his whole tiny fist. All of Cassian’s worries about being a father who lost his own role model a lifetime ago, for at least a moment, vanish.

 

“You should get some sleep,” Jyn mutters during the late-night feedings. “One of us should,” but Cassian gets in with her as support, sitting in the darkness as Jyn struggles to get the baby to latch. When they put the baby back into his bassinet, she collapses in his arms, asleep before she even hits the pillow, but he stays awake for a minute or two more, drinking in her smell and the baby-soft scent of his son that lingers on her skin.

 

Their son’s first word is “Dada.” He says it three days after his first name day, chubby arms reaching out to Cassian as Jyn holds him by the waist. “I hear it is easier for children this age to make that sound,” he says lamely, not wanting her to feel left out, but Jyn just laughs and the three of them–their little family that they somehow carved out from war–embrace.

 

By two and a half standard years, their son is capable of having detailed conversations, including a million questions that all start with “Why?” and complex games of pretend, which include his favorite: Rebel Intelligence Agent

 

“A little spy like his papa,“ Jyn says, polishing her boots in the kitchen of their modest home. Their son darts through the room with a busted comm link in his hand, shouting at Kaytoo to ready the ship.

 

“I didn’t teach him this,” Cassian says. “You fed him the stories.”

 

“Better than then him playing pretend Partisans,” she says wryly, reaching for him. Then, looking up at him with her large green eyes, she says, “We’re not so bad as parents, don’t you think? All things considered”

 

“Not bad at all,” he says, kissing her forehead.

 


	8. Father's Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn Erso and three fathers.

Jyn’s two fathers were both great men and terrible men; both good fathers and fathers who abandoned her to the mercy of a cruel universe. For years she could not think of them without anger and a hardness in her heart. (Death only forgave so much.) But time, she found, softened things. Love softened things. Cassian softened things. And by the time their son was born, the sharp edges of her memories had been smoothed out, burnished by the lightest of touches placed on them over the passing years until she could think of Galen Erso and Saw Gerrera in ways that did not make her hurt anymore.

 

“Is this what a father should be like?” she had asked Cassian one night as they floated through a sea of stars from one planet to the next in search of their new home. They had pushed a mattress to the floor next to their son’s bunk on the ship’s tight quarters, Jyn gripping the toddler’s hand as he slept; Cassian curled at her back, his arms circled around her waist.

 

 “Like what?” he asked, anchoring her to himself; to life as he had done so from the very first day they had met.

 

“Like you,” she whispered.

 

They would continue on like this; feel their way through parenthood and sleepless nights, through childhood illnesses and worry, which at times felt heavier than the weight of the war they had fought for most of their lives. But they did this all together, which, in the end, was the difference between simply surviving and thriving. And thrived they did: seeds in the desert emerging after the flood, springing to life from almost nothing to find the sun again.


	10. Tattoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian has a tattoo, and Jyn wants to find out more.

She sees a hint of it when he turns around just as the he’s fastening the last button of the loose white Hapan tunic. It’s a inky black mark on his pectoral muscle, not a scar or smudge but a tattoo, Jyn realizes. It surprises her that as a spy Cassian would have anything like an identifying mark. He’s so meticulous, and this seems like such an aberration. It makes her burn with curiosity

 

But the mission first, she thinks, shaking her head as she reaches behind her back to try to pull up the zipper on her gown. _Kriffin’ Hapans and their ostentation_ , she thinks, even though the gown is beautiful, a shimmering gold sheath beaded with a thousand tiny glass stones. The zipper gets stuck at her waist though, caught on the seam, and Jyn struggles with it, arms twisting, grunting in a very unladylike, very un-Hapan-like way. She can feel Cassian’s eyes on her, and finally she hears him say, “Would you like some help, Jyn?”

 

“Yes,” she says, relenting, and Cassian walks over, his steady footsteps echoing in the overlarge quarters the Chume’da had so generously given them for this mission. The first pull doesn’t give, and Jyn feels one of his hands settle on her waist for leverage. She sucks in a breath and with a tug, the zipper comes loose and slides up the rest of her back.  

 

Jyn turns to thank him and finds herself still encircled in his arms. 

 

“Hey,” she says, not sure what else to say.

 

“Hey,” he says, and his expression is soft and wide, as though he is just as surprised to find himself here as she is.

 

“You look . . . you look beautiful, Jyn.”

 

Her mouth goes dry; her eyes falling to his lips, then to his chest. “And you have a tattoo,” she blurts out.

 

Cassian laughs, his arms loosening but not releasing her yet.

 

“I had to get it on my last undercover mission. I haven’t had the time to get it removed yet by the med droids.”

 

“You didn’t tell me about it.”

 

“Did you want to know?”

 

“I like knowing things about you,” she says quietly, her hand finding its way to the fabric of his shirt just over the tattoo. Cassian sucks in a breath. They don’t have to be anywhere yet for thirty minutes, she thinks faintly, an idea waking from her subconscious. “Can I see it?” she asks.

 

He nods, a glimmer in his eye, and Jyn watches him watch her as she slowly undoes the top button. Her fingers paint against his skin and against the tattoo still bright with ink and healed over. 

 

“Do you want to see if I have any tattoos?” she asks him, catching his eye. She thinks there are some benefits to being reckless and that there are benefits to feeling safe, too--to being safe with him, specifically.

 

Cassian looks taken aback for a moment, then asks. “Do you have any?”

 

“No,” she whispers, rising on her toes to capture his mouth with hers. “I don’t.”

 


	11. Jackets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke asks Cassian for fashion advice for the award ceremony after the destruction of the Death Star. Jyn helps out and the leather jacket of moral ambiguity makes an appearance.

It’s Jyn who pulls the yellow jacket out from the deepest, darkest recesses of his closet. She sneezes at the dust that’s gathered on it from disuse and covers her mouth as she hands it to Cassian.

 

  
“Give this to Skywalker. It suits him. It doesn’t suit you.” She sneezes again, her eyes starting to water. “Why do you have so many coats?” It’s a rhetorical question; she knows why and loves that he has this one, idiosyncratic weakness for outerwear.   


 

“I haven’t worn that in ages,” he murmurs, holding it up to the light.    


 

“I can see why.”   


 

“Be nice.” A smile spreads on his face, the secret, private one he reserves for her.   


 

“When am I ever nice?” she says, digging back into the closet in search of something specific.   


 

He puts the the yellow jacket down on his bed and walks over to her. She feels the warmth of his hands slide around her waist, and the involuntary sigh that escapes from her lips is full of a desire and ease that she’s still getting used to.   


 

“You’re nice to me.”   


 

Jyn’s hands stop for a moment to take it in, and she blinks once, twice, before she resets. Rummaging a moment longer, she finds what she’s looking for. It’s a dark leather jacket, soft with use, cracks and tears bold and crisscrossing it from missions he’s never talked about.   


 

“I still can’t believe the Death Star is gone,” he says, and she turns in time to see him shaking his head. Jyn’s chest tightens and a million, complex, mixed emotions flood her.   


 

“And we’re still alive,” she says, putting voice to the disbelief they both still feel. Her leg still aches from Scarif, and he has scar on his torso that even Bacta couldn’t erase.    
His arms are still around her, and she clutches the jacket in her arms to her chest. “Give Skywalker the yellow jacket, since he asked. It’s sunshine and golden heroes. It’ll be great for the optics, and it’ll go with that Tatooine complexion of his.” She thrusts the jacket in her arms then into his. “But you should wear this.”   


 

“To the ceremony?”   


 

“No,” she says coyly. “Now. I want to see you in this.”   


 

“I was going to wear my uniform, Jyn–” he starts, but she cuts him off.   


 

“I want to see you in this. And then I want to see me take if off of you.”   


 

His eyes crinkle, and he licks his lips.   


 

“Don’t keep me waiting,” she says.   


 

He takes the jacket in his arms, drops it to the ground with a soft thud to free his hands, and tips her chin up at him. The kiss he places on her mouth is soft at first, then deeper and deeper. 

 

He doesn’t keep her waiting.

 

 


	12. To Build a Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn makes Cassian a dish from his home planet.

The smell comes drifting into the fields and Cassian is transported home–not to the home where he is now, the little homestead on Lah’mu–but back to Fest, to the eternally cold days of his childhood, to the warmth of the kitchen hearth and his mother bent over the stove, stirring the pot of stew for hours until it was ready. He shuts off the thresher and tells the field droid to continue bagging up the crops before picking his way back through the fields tall with quinto grain.

 

He taps his hand on the open door and calls for Jyn, but there is only the hum of the heating system and the sound of soft music playing in the kitchen. He makes his way there but there’s no Jyn, just the evidence of her busy work: a dirty cutting board covered in herbs, vegetable peels on the floor, and a sink full of dirty dishes.

 

“Jyn?” he calls her name louder, and there’s not panic in his voice but something on the edge of worry. It’s habit more than anything; the war has been over for years. But it never stops him from needing to know where she is, from wanting to make sure that she is safe.

 

He calls out again and hears her yell back from the back of the house, “I’m here!”

 

He sees her back first, then the growing curve of her belly, one hand on her waist as she shifts to adjust to the weight of their baby. When she turns to look at him, a smile spreads on her face–less rare these days than they were once–and Cassian feels the swoop in his stomach that’s never gone away. Jyn’s standing over a fire crackling in a basalt firepit, a long ladle dipping in and out of a large pot.

 

“Hey,” he says, pulling off his gloves and throwing them on the grass and reaching for her. The wind picks up and blows her hair across her forehead, and he pushes it away from her eyes before kissing her forehead.

 

Jyn rises on her toes and tips his mouth toward hers with thumb and forefinger. “Give me a proper kiss,” she mutters, and does just that.

 

When they break, Cassian wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her closer. “Is that what I think it is?” he asks, nodding toward the cast iron pot over the fire.

 

“Braised chollas short rib stew with white beans and gremolata,” she confirms.

 

He swallows, and his heart feels full. “My mother used to make that. How did you know?”

 

“You mentioned it once, back after Endor. Years ago. I didn’t want to try and make it until I got better at cooking though. I remembered your face when you talked about it.” Jyn shrugs. “I wanted to try.”

 

“You are a marvel.”

 

“I’m something,” she laughs.

 

Cassian pulls her closer and feels the baby kick against his hand. He closes his eyes, every cell in his body vibrating. He never believed in heaven the way other sentients did, in anything he couldn’t see or touch or smell or hear. But maybe heaven was never elusive like some greater power in the sky, some mysterious place of mist and ephemera. Maybe heaven had been waiting for him here all this time in a place like this, with Jyn in his arms, their growing child in her belly, food on the hearth in a world without war. That was something Cassian could believe in.

 


	13. Vows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vows made on a different beach.

It’s a different beach this time, a different day. A special day. The sand is not black like the shores of Lah’mu, nor is it gold and all too bright like it was on Scarif where they held each other and waited for the light to swallow them. It’s a beach of pebbles, smooth and round from the flow of the ocean water of Aria Prime, speckled blue and bone white and gray. Flint and chalk, Jyn recognizes at a glance. She should know it, remember it. Her mother had been a geologist, and as a child Jyn had collected colored stones and displayed them on her window ledge where the sun could bring out all the various shades.

 

But her mother is not here now except somewhere buried in her heart. But Cassian is, and Jyn reaches out to him with her kyber necklace and loops it over his neck. “Marry me,” she says as an acknowledgment of their vows and not as a question because he had asked her weeks ago and she had said yes before the words were all out of his mouth.

 

Cassian doesn’t bother to stand up straight from where he’s bent to receive the pendant and simply leans in to kiss her, his hands sliding against her cheeks as he breathes her in and she, him. Jyn will never forget this moment. She doesn’t have to have foresight or visions to know this. She will always remember the taste of his lips, the way the air was damp and smelled of salt and rain and moss. How she blinked her eyes open when they finally broke apart and he whispered just for her, “You are my home,” and how like the refrain of a song she told him back, “And you are mine.”

 

Bodhi and Baze clap somewhere close by, and Jyn can hear Chirrut’s laugh of delight and his cries of “Finally, finally!”

 

Jyn blinks again, her chest tight, her heart so full, and she gazes at Cassian, now her husband not just in feeling but in law. “Are you crying?” she asks suddenly, and he laughs, his eyes shimmering with tears.

 

“I’ve never knew what it was like to be happy like this before you,” he says, his voice husky, water dancing on his lashes. “I never even thought I’d live this long.”

 

Jyn cups his face, kisses away the tears. “Me, either. I’m glad you did.”

 

Cassian’s hands tangle in her hair, and she feels the press of his forehead against hers. “I’m glad you did too.”


End file.
